


Silences

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference, Feels, First Time, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Mentor/Protégé
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 01:00:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20106562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Both of them have been aware of this feeling between them. Sean thinks they can afford to be selfish about it.





	Silences

Tonight — tomorrow, before the sunrise, — Sean is going to take Zachariah to the old dome, as Connor took Sean himself ages ago. They will steal away from Abundance’s watchful glare, like they did sometimes before, like Sean did with Mel and Alex, too, years before Abundance took Mel away and hurt him so much he couldn’t bear returning.

Just the two of them, him and Zachariah.

And in that place reserved just for them, just theirs, the Sanctum Sanctorum, like the crypt behind the Chapel where no bodies rest but memories linger, ever-alive, — he is going to share their secret like the treasure of mystery, as is their birthright. It doesn’t matter that Zachariah wasn’t with them from the start. He is theirs.

And he will bear their burden.

Sean is going to hate himself later, he knows, because as Zachariah becomes one of them fully, he will be entered into the breeding roster. He will be sent to war, sooner or later, because whatever fancies Mother Abundance allows them to indulge in: Ian’s research, Connor’s teaching, Sam’s training, Sona’s experiments — their purpose in life is to be weapons of Abundance’s conquest, righteous anger or whichever excuses she can come up with.

He’s going to hate himself for not being able to postpone Zachariah’s initiation even more, he’s going to hate himself for their fitting together so well that there were no problems with mentoring Zachariah.

But it will be later.

Tomorrow, in the quiet of the night, a train will take them out of Ophir, and the night and the stars, the mountains and plains, the winds and the darkness will bear witness to Zachariah taking in the burden of being theirs. Sean is certain he will bear it as well as it can be carried, and Sean will help for as long as possible.

And then, after Zachariah accepts it, they will be selfish. Sean has decided.

He should make certain that Zachariah goes to sleep early — but as he goes to the door leading from his room, he hears a knock. There are only few people who would knock on his door.

He opens it, folding his face into a mock-scowl. “You should be asleep, my student.” He steps back — an invitation — and Zachariah steps in.

It is long months ago that Zachariah stepped here for the first time, murmuring apologies and throwing glances around, and Sean ached, thinking that Zachariah might be disappointed at his room being just like everyone else’s, with the small shelf near the bed holding his “treasure box” and other personal items that don’t fit into the box being the only identifying thing. It worried him so much, it was the worst thing — that Zachariah would see through his dogshit, see just what he is behind all his big words and aloofness — and that Zachariah would be disappointed.

That fear lingers still in the back of his mind — even though he knows that Zachariah saw right into him from the start — and never looked away.

Zachariah sweeps a few strands of hair away from his face, looks around. “Don’t know why I came. Aren’t you supposed to sleep, too?”

Sean smiles. It is easy with Zachariah. He likes it with Zachariah. “_You_ will be doing all the work. And I’m old and will be indulging myself by doing nothing except watching you.” In truth, he will probably be showering sparks in anxiety.

“How did it go for you?”

Zachariah always asks things like this: how was it for you? what did you do when you were in such situation? tell me a story, Master, help me be like you, help me feel like I belong.

And Sean tells him stories.

“I couldn’t sleep the night, and my charge was all over the place, and it attracted a flock of wild ostriches who decided that two Mancers were a nutritious breakfast. Good thing that my master is a decorated war veteran with a steady hand.”

Zachariah snickers. “As though _mine_ isn’t.” He says it with such pride, even though he certainly understands what it means: murder and pain.

Sean loves this about Zachariah: the ability to find hope without shying away from the dark. Something good even in the depths of despair.

Most of that good comes from within Zachariah himself.

Sean doesn’t tell Zachariah that he cried on Connor’s shoulder after seeing the vids — he cried not because he was scared or upset over being a mutant (it was always a secret that wasn’t exactly a secret) — but because it meant his training was truly over and that either of them can be sent to the front now, and he didn’t want Con and Ian to bury him, he couldn’t do it to them.

He doesn’t tell Zachariah that he got so, so drunk right before the initiation ceremony, and added after — not because it isn’t something he wants Zachariah to know about him, but because he’d have to tell Zachariah about his shouting at Con not even a day later after the ceremony, his head splitting with a headache, shouting in dark rage because Mel had been shipped away, and Sean hadn’t noticed and nobody told him beforehand.

He likes it when Zachariah smiles — Shadow knows Zachariah has few opportunities to do so, and Sean won’t rob him of them, not now.

Zachariah’s smile changes suddenly — and Sean knows that this will be another step in the dance they’ve been dancing almost since the beginning of their two years together as a mentor and a student.

“May I sleep here, Master?”

He answers Zachariah’s foxy smile with his own. “Yes.”

The surprise on Zachariah’s face is so fragile.

It went unspoken for the first year, and Zachariah thought his feelings weren’t obvious. Then, Sean made it known to Zachariah that those feelings were not a mystery to him and that Zachariah wasn’t alone in them. It felt for a while to be a mistake born of an attempt at kindness.

What followed couldn’t be described as any word other than “a siege”. There were moments when he thought both of them wouldn’t be able to get through it alive — but he couldn’t bear the idea of giving Zachariah over to someone else.

Over the years Sean has learned this thing about himself: he often realizes how precious certain people are to him only when they are gone.

He won’t do it to Zachariah.

He watches his student carefully, then leans to him — but Zachariah looks away.

“What is wrong?”

“Feels like a goodbye, Master.”

He smiles. “No. It’s a welcome. But if you want, let us make it so: if you become a technomancer, my full brother, when the sun is up, I will kiss you again.”

Zachariah snorts. “You always find the right motivation. And... ‘again’?”

“Yes.”

Zachariah’s lips are soft and taste of cocoa.

***

They survive the dome — which cannot be said for the dome itself — and Sean even manages to not cry during the ceremony, although he does notice the glistening in Con’s eyes.

Zachariah is so handsome in the full grays.

Ian gives Zachariah his new orders as soon as they are out of the Chapel: Abundance is without patience when it comes to trying her new toy.

But Zachariah doesn’t have to relocate to the Army barracks yet: there is a feast, there are his kindred waiting for him — he’s the man of the day.

He is still only theirs.

Food is always special among them: it is something that comforts when you are a child and Master Connor slips you a candy; it is something you sneak for your closest from the forbidden ventures into the city; it is the abundant, sometimes strange foodstuffs at the Settlers sites, left by cultists hoping to lure the people from Earth. All Mancers hail from Earth — they are entitled to these offerings. Food is what you share with the enemy in a quiet moment: war is a place and a time when lines are crossed, and the tired eyes looking at you across a patch of land that will drink your blood resemble the eyes that look at you from a mirror. When you are the only Mancer for weeks, the sudden taste of someone’s charged field is a comfort.

Abundance might take away trinkets — but it is difficult to take away what is already consumed.

So, they feast.

There are extravagant puff pastries with chocolate glaze, to Zachariah’s delight and confusion. He will meet Uncle Anton yet, though Sean is sure that Anton is already keeping an eye on Zachariah. There are noodles with Auroran pineapples, there is fried lichen — Zachariah’s favorite things. There is water. There is wine, of course, but Sean intends to stay away from it.

He is aware of Zachariah’s attention. They kissed again after they got out of the dome and Sean helped Zachariah get up.

Sean excuses himself from the feast.

He takes his time in the dark hallways, thinking of nothing in particular, his charge prickling over his skin. He steps into his room, into the soft light of the lamp on the bedside drawers, starts unbuttoning his jacket — and remembers he didn’t leave the light on before going to the feast.

He looks at Zachariah.

Zachariah is pressed to the wall, his slanted eyes flickering away — it was like this a year ago, when Sean would catch him looking. Later, Zachariah stopped turning away and started challenging him in this.

There is half-challenge, half-uncertainty in his eyes now.

Sean lowers his hands.

“You promised me something, Master,” Zachariah says. He doesn’t like to ask. Asking questions — yes, plenty, all the time. But asking for something…

“It’s ‘Sean’ now.” He steps closer. The room is small, and he doesn’t want either of them to feel cornered — not now, not ever if he can help it, — so he has to tread carefully.

Zachariah straightens up, leaning away from the wall.

Sean lifts his hand, puts it on Zachariah’s cheek — his right cheek, uneven with scars but not prickly with stubble. Sean raises a brow. “You shaved?”

Zachariah’s eyes dart to the side again, and Sean’s hand warms up as Zachariah’s cheeks are suffused with pink. “I’m—”

“Don’t apologize. You haven’t done anything wrong.” And then he leans closer, down, and Zachariah’s lips part…

The ground doesn’t open up under their feet and the ceiling isn’t ripped off and troops don’t bang on the door of the room.

But breath catches in Sean’s throat.

He didn’t know how much he wanted, until he got what he wanted.

Zachariah’s lips are soft, tender — he must have been biting them, and Sean tries to be soft to match — be ever the mentor, reasonable, a good example — but he’s never been reasonable. He only pretends to be.

He can’t get enough of this.

He puts his other hand on Zachariah’s neck, and Zachariah’s hands are firmly on Sean’s waist, and they kiss, and kiss, and kiss, slow and tender, then hungry, drinking in each other’s need, the two years of longing. Zachariah is breathing in short wet gasps.

Sean holds his face close, looks into Zachariah’s eyes — wet, too, — and kisses his left cheek, his nose, his forehead, lingering. Then presses his lips to Zachariah’s right cheek — and Zachariah twitches as though from a shock. But they touch each other so often, they are so often in each other’s field that no sparks pass between them anymore — at least not like between strangers.

“Master…”

He smiles, rubs his cheek against Zachariah’s scarred one. “You like calling me that, don’t you?”

“I… Yes… Master, I’m—”

He thinks what might have followed is a “sorry” — but it disappears in a strangled noise Zachariah makes when Sean licks the scarred cheek. “I always wondered,” he muses aloud — Zachariah has, indeed, shaved: there is a minty taste of the aftershave balm. “Whether it is desensitized or the opposite.”

“The opposite. Fuck.” Zachariah’s breathing is ragged, and his hands slide up Sean’s chest, wrinkling his shirt.

Sean moves back a little to give him more room — and Sean can’t be the reasonable one. Not with the way Zachariah is looking at him, with wide-eyed wonder and disbelief and hunger and all those good things that coil in Sean’s stomach. Then Zachariah’s light, glistening eyes flick to his face.

“You are so beautiful, Master.”

It steals his breath away, to be adored so openly, by someone who knows him, sees him, knows what he does, what he is — and still wants to look.

No, he doesn’t want to be reasonable.

He moves his fingers — tingling, like when he had his first ever kiss, like when he… He moves them down Zachariah’s face, around, brushes the torn ear, to the neck, settles them on the curve of his shoulder.

“You are gorgeous. Zach. My Zach.”

“Yours.”

This is the most dangerous thing to say to someone like him — but he suspects Zach knows this like everything else — and chooses to say anyway.

Zach’s hand twists his shirt. “May I?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t make it easy for Zach, he never did with anything: he kisses Zach’s cheek again, his brow, his temple where the connectors are — but Zach’s fingers, quick fingers of a pickpocket, the nimble fingers of a lockpicker, don’t falter, undoing the buttons.

Perhaps he is a treasure Zach very much wants to steal. Sean would like to be stolen.

There is triumph on Zach’s face when he opens Sean’s shirt.

And Sean is gripped with uncertainty, twisting his guts into a knot. He knows his face is handsome — but his body, for all the technomantic resilience, has enough scars as to make it a matter of personal taste. There were people who turned away from it.

One of Zach’s hands falls to his hip, and the other, warm from charge, moves slowly up, over his skin, over the scars — and Zach’s enraptured expression tells Sean everything he needs to know about Zach’s tastes.

A flicker of uncertainty mirroring Sean’s own, in Zach’s eyes — and then Zach’s soft lips are on the tendons of his neck, and Sean can hardly breathe.

“Zach.” He cradles Zach’s head in his palm, hair thicker than his own. “Zach, I want you.” They leave his lips aching, those words, like wine on a bruised mouth.

His heart is ready to burst.

Zach lifts his head, and they kiss again, tight, like a welcoming after a long absence.

“I want you, too,” Zach rasps. His voice is beautiful. “But I don’t know how… I know how I want it — it’s that I want everything at once.”

Sean smiles, he doesn’t want to hold it back. He kisses the corner of Zach’s mouth. “Should I guide you in this, too? Be your,” he brushes his lips over Zach’s, “Master?”

Zach moans. It’s soft, and higher than his usual voice, and sounds like victory to Sean’s ears. He tugs Zach’s shirt from his pants. “Let’s get you undressed.”

They work together, as in combat, as in other things, in all things, in stealing away into the city and then coming up with explanations for their absence on the spot, together, in front of the incredulous Connor.

But this is less elegant than usual. They stumble to the bed — all three steps — and Zach pushes the open shirt off Sean’s shoulders, caressing them, while Sean works through the buttons on Zach’s — and they barely stop kissing, Zach’s mouth hungry, sensitive, and he’s making small noises that Sean can hear only because he’s so close. Just for him.

He kisses Zach’s right shoulder — scarred, too, — then licks the triangle between the shoulder and the collarbone, slides his palms down Zach’s ribs. Zach is slender, quick, light on his feet — gorgeous.

“You are a delight,” he murmurs, and feels the heat of Zach’s cheeks, the flare of his field. “My delight. There is a sweet…”

“I know. _Sean__…_” So needy.

Zach sinks onto the bed, and Sean takes another chance to admire him. His stomach pale, his chest flushed and moving with his out-of-rhythm breaths, fingers digging into the comforter, lips parted, bright with kisses, eyes wide, to take everything in.

Sean realizes it’s to take _him_ in.

“I’m afraid there is not much space in this bed.” He stops his gaze on Zach’s eyes. What if…

“It’s fine, Master.” Zach reaches out to him.

Sean takes his hand and holds tight.

Then he throws a leg over Zach’s, plants a knee on the bed and bends to kiss Zach once more. Kisses him thoroughly — a promise — and Zach responds, exploring his mouth without shame.

Sean leans down further, suddenly feeling clumsy, unable to figure out the logistics of his own body — but Zach moves, and they are perfect, they are so perfect together, and his clumsiness evaporates. He slides a hand under the waistband of Zach’s pants, palms the angular hipbone, wonders what it would be like, to kiss it, — then moves his hand further and squeezed Zach’s ass.

Zach rocks up, presses himself to him — Sean moans into Zach’s mouth, suddenly aware of his own need, so very certain, and Zach’s need, hot and tight, — it’s wound up all over him, urging Sean closer: they are magnets held together by invisible forces. Those forces that prickle in Zach’s fingers, warm up Zach’s hands roaming over Sean’s back.

Zach kisses under his jaw, kisses his throat — Sean throws his head back, soaking in Zach’s adoration.

They peel off their pants, getting tangled for a moment in limbs and cloth, laughing quietly into each other’s skin.

Zach doesn’t cease moving: touching him, kissing him, demanding his attention.

Sean reaches for the bedside drawer, takes out a small bottle of oil…

“Fuck.” It’s not an expletive, it’s more like Zach breathing out his feelings. “Fuck, you are hot when you take charge.” And then he’s blushing again, and Sean kisses him for that.

“Exactly why I take charge.” He smirks, uncorking the bottle. “You are perfect. Lie back — yes, like this.” He tips the bottle over Zach’s thighs, his cock.

Zach trembles, makes a sobbing sound. “Master…”

He will probably remember this by the scent of the sweet almond oil. When they are no longer—

He takes hold of Zach’s cock — hot, slippery from oil, glistening — he doesn’t want darkness, he wants to see everything. Wants Zach to see everything — all his scars, and flaws, and insecurities. He wants to be himself for Zach.

And Zach is watching him.

“Messy, Master.”

He smiles, rubs a thumb under the crown — and Zach arches off the bed with another sob, claws at Sean’s arm.

“Let’s be messy, my Zach.”

And then he guides his cock between Zach’s thighs — and Zach understands without words what he wants. Zach’s hands pull him down, urge him to lower his full weight on Zach — and he remembers that Zach is strong, he always has been, and Zach is tensing his thighs, and Sean is trapped, buries his face in the crook of Zach’s neck, licks the salt off Zach’s skin, and thrusts, the glide wonderful. He can’t think, can’t remember his name.

Zach’s length is pressed between them, hot, and Zach is making those little sobbing noises, like he can’t get enough air, and Sean has enough mind to slide his hand between their heated bodies, even though the angle…

“Sean!”

The charge shoots through them both — and for an endless moment they are one, a complete system, in a perfect sync that flares like a star.

They ride out the aftershocks together, holding onto each other tightly, Zach’s hand buried in Sean’s hair, their skin glued, the heat pressing.

Zach kisses his left temple right at the connectors — and then licks them, wet.

Sean hugs him tight. “Like a battery?”

“Mhm. Tingles.”

He slides a little off Zach, and they can turn to each other, squeezed on this small bed, trading lazy kisses.

He strokes Zach’s hair. So many times a few strands would fall onto Zach’s face, and every time he wanted to move it back.

“We’ve made a mess, Sean.”

He nuzzles Zach’s cheek — the right one. “I planned on us making an even bigger mess tonight — but if you are not _up_ to it…” He squeezes Zach’s hip pointedly. He intends to kiss it at some point.

Zach’s quiet laughter brushes over his lips. Zach’s eyes are bright and happy, in a soft, certain way. “You are older, Master, I’d expect _you_ not being up to it.”

He stretches his arms and legs, his fingers brushing the wall, then wraps his arms around Zach again. Zach fits well here.

“I’m a technomancer,” he says with as much seriousness as he can summon while being naked, lying here with the man he loves, after making love to him — though they are still making love, just in a slightly different way. “I can go on for longer and recover faster than other people.”

“Then,” Zach says, looking very, very pleased, “I propose we research the limits of our endurance.”

“A very good proposal, my student, I accept it.”

Zach smiles, soft, and it fills all the broken spaces inside Sean with light.

A strand of hair falls onto Zach’s face, and Sean sweeps it back.

The silence is no longer empty.


End file.
